a/n- i just want to say once again how awesome all of you guys are and thank you for your reviews. i love reviews! yay! someone give me a bad one so i'll stop gloating so much! ;)

read on, for the question on everyone's mind about a certain someone and a certain someone shall be revealed...

Seventeen.

Claudia

I can't sleep.

All I can do is think. Think about my life, what I've done with it. Trying not to think about Pete, which is difficult, considering he's snoring quite loudly next to me. I didn't make him sleep in the living room. Not that I had much of a choice. We'd had sex, quick, quite uneventful, slightly disappointing sex, and he fell asleep about thirty seconds after. All day long, he was pawing me, grabbing me, begging me to go to bed. Finally I do and what? Four minutes of discomfort. I watched the clock.

He was drunk, though. Plus the whole thing with Grace. He just has too much on his mind.

From the room next door, I hear a thump.

I glanced at the clock. I reset it when the power came back on. It's nearly four in the morning. I know Mary Anne is an early riser, but it's a little too early.

I strain my ears to listen, and hear very low, muffled voices. Then not so low. Then quite loud. Something hits the ground and I'm up in a flash, banging on the door. "Mary Anne?"

They don't seem to hear me. Listening now without shame, I hear Mary Anne roar "Give me my fucking phone!"

It's enough. I threw open the door, because Mary Anne saves that word for special occasions. Standing frozen, both looking at me, are Trent and Mary Anne, half dressed but decent enough. Trent is holding a cell phone above his head, and Mary Anne is reaching for it. The both look extremely pissed.

It lasts for about half of a second. Mary Anne forgets the phone and rushes toward me, struggling into a pair of sweat pants. "Claudia! Something's wrong with Dawn! We have to call nine one one!"

I look around the room. No Dawn. "Where is she?"

"My house." Trent says gruffly, pulling a shirt over his head. "With drugs and God knows what. You are not calling nine one one until we know it's really an emergency. Last thing I need is to get caught with underage girls..." He muttered that last part, brushing past me. Mary Anne followed. I grabbed her hand.

"He's right, you know. Dawn could get in a lot of trouble. It could be just like last week, okay?" I spoke gently as we walked down the stairs together. She nodded, her eyes drowning in tears that have not spilled over. I look ahead and Kristy is standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching Trent run by her. She looks up at us questioningly.

"Dawn." I say simply. Kristy's face falls and she spins around, running after Trent.

I continue to walk, holding Mary Anne's hand. She needs to calm down. It's not raining anymore, but the wind is still blowing like mad. Trent and Kristy have long since disappeared into the house. I hear no shouts, no screams. This has to be a good sign.

We enter the house slowly. Mary Anne's eyes are closed. We listen, and hear voices coming from down the hall. Normal voices. Not panicked. Not screaming.

"Maybe she's okay..." Mary Anne whispered. She didn't sound very confident.

In the hall, standing away from the open doorway, was the guy Dawn's been hanging around. He had his arms folded across his chest, his eyes wide with terror. He looked like he'd been crying. I rushed those last five feet, forgetting to keep Mary Anne calm. The sight we were met by was not a pretty one.

Lying on a twin sized bed, atop a deep red (blood red) blanket, was Dawn. Her skin almost glowed a pale white. Her eyes were shut, and relaxed, as if she were asleep. She was eerily still. For one insane, wild, crushing second, I thought she might be dead.

Kristy perched on the bed beside her, stroking her platinum hair, whispering. Trent was angrily digging through a first-aid kit. It cannot be that big of an emergency. No shouts, no screams.

Mary Anne rushed to the bed, and Kristy got out of the way. "Dawn? Kristy... what happened?"

Kristy leaned across Mary Anne and plucked a prescription bottle from the night stand. She held it up for Mary Anne to see. "Vicodin."

Mary Anne shrank away from the bottle in horror. "Did she... did she try to kill herself?"

Shrugging, Kristy put an arm around her. "We'll have to ask. She certainly didn't succeed if that was her plan. Trent said there were only eight or nine in the bottle. With the speed... It's not enough, we'll leave it at that." Kristy looked down at Dawn, sounding a little out of it herself. "Probably got a bad high. Wanted to bring herself down. When you're in that state, you do stupid things, you hurt yourself on accident, thinking you're helping."

I stared at Kristy, wanting to know what happened to her, what she went through, why she knew so well. At the same moment, Trent shouted in victory and held up smelling salts. Kristy grabbed them from his hand roughly and immediately applied them to our unconscious friend.

It's not like the movies. She doesn't open her eyes immediately and sit up with a gasp. Instead, she remains still for a few moments, and a frown develops on Kristy's face. Mary Anne's face begins to fall even further.

Then I see it.

Her lip twitches slightly. Then her nose. Slowly, painfully slow, her eyes begin to crack open.

Tears spilled over on to my cheeks, and I felt a rush of love for this girl. I had never gotten to know her very well, not even back in the club days. That day she came over to Stacey's house, I had begun to feel a closeness with her. Two weeks later, the idea of her being as scared as the eerie tone of Kristy's voice had suggested was painful to me.

I just want her to be okay.

As her eyes opened more and more, Dawn groaned. She looked around the room slowly and croaked "What?"

A small, shrill laugh escaped Mary Anne. "Nothing, sis." She replied, shaking her head. "Don't worry about it. We're going to take you home, okay?"

Dawn nodded and closed her eyes again. Trent scooped her up easily and led the way back to our house, Kristy, Mary Anne, and I trailing behind. None of us spoke. Logan was sitting on the porch with a cigarette in his hand. Stacey, Alan and Pete were all huddled in the doorway, looking sleepy. Alan raised an eyebrow at Trent carrying Dawn. He's been there before. Mary Anne followed all the way to Dawn's room, but Kristy and I held back. Kristy sat next to Logan and breathed a deep sigh. He offered her a cigarette wordlessly. Lighting it, Kristy looked up at me.

"That girl is going to give me a stroke, I swear."

I managed a small, forced laugh as Pete snaked an arm around my waste. I glanced over at him, unsure of his intentions. He just looked concerned. "What happened?"

So, with our new audience, Kristy and I relived the tale of What Happened To Dawn. It wasn't much of a story. Nobody knows what happened yet. Kristy didn't repeat her earlier, wise-sounding theory, and I was left once again wondering what kind of secrets she has in her past.

Stacey quickly lost interest and zombied her way back to bed. The rest of us retreated back into the house, but into the living room. Interestingly, instead of sitting with Kristy, who was still quite visibly shaken, Alan sat on the couch next to Logan. I decided to check on Mary Anne and Dawn. Pete, of course, followed me.

When I entered the room I was not greeted by a terrific sight. Dawn was leaning over her bed, throwing up into a bowl. Mary Anne was holding her hair back. Trent was in the middle of a sentence. It ended with "...just needs to sleep."

Mary Anne looked irritated, so I could guess what subject they were on. Again. I immediately sided with Trent. He's just being selfish, he doesn't want to get in trouble. I'm thinking of Dawn. "She'll get in trouble if you take her to a hospital, Mary Anne. The doctors will test her and see what's in her blood, they might think she tried to kill herself, they might come here and find drugs in the house. She's awake, and yeah, she's throwing up, but that happened last week, too." Mary Anne stared at me, eyes wide. I don't talk so much these days. And I don't think I've offered intelligent debate ever in my life.

Dawn finished, and rolled over again. Mary Anne mopped her face with a washcloth. "No cops." Dawn sputtered.

I almost laughed, but thought better of it. I put my hand on Mary Anne's shoulder. "For now, let's respect her wishes. I promise you, if she doesn't seem better in an hour, or if she gets any worse, I will dial nine one one myself." Trent made a face and began to say something, but I gave him a hard look. He shut his mouth.

"I'm going to back out into the living room." I told Mary Anne, who nodded, still a little taken aback. I turned, giving Trent another dirty look. I don't like that guy. I don't like that Stacey was sitting on his lap and I don't like that he was in Mary Anne's room at four in the morning. I don't like the idea that Mary Anne probably had sex with him. I sigh to myself. These things will have to wait until later.

Pete put his arm around me again and I smiled. He must have heard me sigh all frustrated. I looked over at him, and he stopped and kissed me gently on the lips. "Everything will be fine." He murmured.

Smiling, I wrapped my arms around him in a fierce hug, enjoying this affection. This was the kind of guy I wanted. One that will take me in his arms when things are bad, hold me, whisper to me, rub my back--

Rub my chest.

I kept my eyes closed, hoping Pete wasn't doing what I thought he was. Disappointingly, yeah, there he was, kneading my breasts. Too hard, too.

"Let's go back upstairs." He whispered.

Opening my eyes, I pulled back a little and looked up into his face. Wanting to see compassion, and maybe sadness. I get bright eyes and a come hither gaze.

"Pete." I said quietly. "My friend could have died just now."

Pete's hands drop to my waist, and he pulls me close again. "I know, baby. I'm sorry about Dawn. I just..." He smiled a little as his hands slid slowly from my waist to my lower back. Then down. Grabbing my ass (again, too hard), he pushes me to the wall, and leans down to kiss me again.

I put my hands on his chest and rested them there for a second. He stopped leaning and looked at me questioningly. I didn't think.

I just shoved him.

I must have more strength than I thought, because he immediately let go of me, falling hard into the wall behind him with a curse. I immediately turned to my right and walked into the bathroom, looking over my shoulder. "Stay the hell away from me, Pete." I said, enjoying the utterly shocked look on his face a split second before I slammed the door.

I leaned on the sink, fighting what I knew was coming. The urge to turn around, go back out, apologize. Let him walk all over me. The urge to cry. I've lived my entire life needing attention and approval from those I thought I cared about most, like Stacey, like Pete. In the meantime my family hates me.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and allowed a few tears to spill over. What have I done to myself?

Pete doesn't knock on the door or call to me. That weak part of me, the one in such desperate need of positive feedback on the superficial things in life, was sad. I wanted him to fight for me. Another part of me argued that he's just a jerk. He only wants one thing. He made that very obvious.

Shaking my head, press my face into a towel. It doesn't matter if anyone sees that I've been crying. They'll think it's because of Dawn. I decide to go upstairs and fix myself anyway. As I exit the bathroom (Pete nowhere to be found) I hear the T.V. blaring news and smell coffee. I guess some of the others decided to get up for the day, too. Trudging up the stairs, I picture my bed, and think about how long it's been since I last slept. What, twenty hours? Perhaps more. I have to stay awake for a while though. For Dawn.

As I near the top of the stairs I catch a glimpse of movement to the right. There are four rooms on the second floor, mine and Mary Anne's to the left, Stacey's closest to the stairs, and Mallory's to the right. I look over toward Mallory's door, and stop dead.

Entering her room, silhouetted in lamplight and about to close the door behind him, was Logan Bruno.